UK Pension Consultant Blames 'Everyone' for Pension
Woes

April 15, 2003 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - A pensions
partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) has launched an
attack on everyone involved in the United Kingdom pensions
industry for the country's current state of pension
troubles.

Fresh off of pension funds in the UK turning in
their worst annual performance since 1974 (See
UK Pensions Dip Deep Down in 2002
),PWC’s John Shuttleworth said the “roll-call of
indictments is a long one,” as he rattled off a laundry
list of perpetrators, which includes corporate
management, actuaries, accountants, the financial
services industry, trustees, parliament, the
government, the regulators, pensions industry bodies,
investment consultants and the media, according to a
report by Investment & Pensions Europe.

“Everybody is partly to blame – although nobody is
honest enough to raise their hand,” said Shuttleworth as he
further elaborated on each responsible party’s
misdeeds.
For example, Shuttleworth says corporate management made a
“truly reckless” concentration in a single asset class –
equities. “Why was there so little investment in, for
example, property? Indeed, why no insurance?”

Further, he launched accusations at actuaries for not
understanding how to allow for the “time value of money,”
asking “in what sort of fantasy world is it possible that
the riskier the trustees’ investments, the lower their
liabilities, the smaller the contributions that can be
paid, and the smaller the investments that are
needed?”
Similar accusations were thrown in the trustees’
directions, saying they lacked self-awareness by not
knowing the limits of their own knowledge.

Most unusual to find themselves in the pension
funding cross hairs was the media, an entity
Shuttleworth blamed for merely regurgitating the
pension industry’s propaganda.